I enjoyed this video, took me a while to watch it due to other life stuff which is more boring with no ships or guns.
I hope we get it in 2018 but if this is a slice then I can see why it has been delayed to hell, there's probably enough engineering hours and data in that verticle slice to release an entire fully fledged game alone by a AAA publisher.
Are they still planning on you being able to have a couple friends drop in on the campaign with you?
Is releasing it episodically still the plan?
I liked the FPS part, it seemed to be choices like quite take down vs storm guns blazing, so your play style would effect the outcome... that to me will make it fun. Boy it was big, like holy fuckknuckle big... I don’t know how I am going to find anything. Let alone complete a mission. I didn’t even see the damn landing pad till he was on approach. The open world was epic, oh climb up here and drop in and... awesome but I got a feeling I’m going to end up smelling the damn roses on the wrong end of the planet. A+++ for realism
First time I watched it, I wasn't really impressed, it was nice but nothing earthshattering. Then for the second viewing I switched form my shitty svga tablet to a proper fullHD screen, and holy shit! I could finally see all the subtle face animation, enviroment detail, and all the stuff. Now that was waaay more impressive. It was so realistic.. but it wasn't real, and that left me wanting MOOOOORE! :D
I know ppl had issues with the pacing and how long things take ingame. I'm pretty sure you will be able to skip ahead with quantum jumps if you want to, but I really liked that it wasn't a 1 minute rush of adrenaline, then a 5 minute cutscene, then repeat for 4 hours, game done.
This "proper" pacing reminds me of good old games, where you get to enjoy the world you are playing in, get immersed, feel the atmosphere, see the detail... not just rush through it ignoring it all so you can say "I finished the game in x hours, yay!". CR seems to aim for the older, more patient crowd, which I find a good thing.
The only thing I'm worried about is that, I hope the length of missions won't limit players with little freetime available. To play a 1,5 hour mission (and probably replay if you die) in one go, can be a daunting task for a lot of ppl with actual lives to live lol
So as it's a single player game, I hope they put in a few checkpoints at least, and not just the "save in bed" mechanic lol
One thing that I agree with though, is that the combat felt waaaay too fast. I played a full round of Pirate Swarm yesterday after the stream, with a bone stock SuperHornet, and it was still too jousty, while time to kill was a bit too fast on Auroras, and waaaay too long on other single seaters. Anyways, I rarely got to see what I was shooting unless it was the size of a Vanguard.
I want combat to be just a tad slower, to be more of the chase/dogfight style than the jousting type it is today. I think that for AI combat, especially in SQ42, it would be the right way to go. But these things will get tuned for a few more years before I have to start really worrying about it anyways lol. (I remember this being one of the things I didn't like about WC:Prophecy back in the day, most enemies were jousty. On the other hand, Freespace1-2 did this perfectly. You had newtonian-ish slide, lots of speed, but still felt like old-school dogfights. I want that feeling in my spacesim, and it's getting closer, but not there yet. It was there, and even overshot, when they tuned the speeds ways down, but then they "fixed" it and made it jousty again)
So the graphics look pretty damn awesome, let's see how it holds up into the 2020s when this probably gets released.
The locations looked interesting and full of atmosphere, like they had stories to tell. As it should be, I was quiet happy to see that the world building pays off.
Animations are great, but as I'm writing this I'm watching the directors commentary version (go watch that as well if you haven't already!), and I noticed that all the background characters that are not doing any special scripted stuff, walk with a way too stiff and straight-up spine. It's kinda disturbing to watch, they look very robotic. I guess that will get softened up later. Lighting is buggy and hit-n-miss in a lot of places, but CR explains that it was too dark cos of a recent feature implementation that screwed with lighting inside the Idris.
Character interactions were impressive, it felt natural and immersive. The facial animation is really good, especially that I didn't get the descent into uncanny valley that I get from L.A. Noir. So yeah, I'm impressed! I would have liked if the inner thought system was silent, it is called "inner thought", and as the player, they should be my inner thoughts, not someone elses. I think this can be seriously immersion breaking for some. I get that this way, it works the same way as it did in WingCommander 3-5, but in those games, it was kind of a 3rd person thing with the FMV anyways. It didn't really break anything. Maybe there will be an option to turn the voice off, but I'm sure I could get used to it.
Also, this is one of the rare games that gets human head shapes right, even for females. It is a sad fact, that in most games, human female character look unnatural, unrealistically proportioned (not just in the chest-waist-bottom area), and just generally strange, breaking all immersion. For example Mass Effects (all of em) has atrocious female characters, as it probably uses the same tech that it uses for male characters. It's significantly easier, and thus cheaper to use the same animation assets, skeleton, and tech for every gender, shape or form, and that's usually the problem. Another good example for recent really bad art of female characters would be the Bethesda's rpgs like skyrim, fallout 4, and the rest. Every character, no matter the race or gender, moves the exact same way, and looks almost identical from a bit farther away, because they use one freaking skeleton and the same animations for em all I guess...
On the other hand, females in the Witcher 3 look just as perfectly realistic as males, cos CDPR realised that it was fucking important to get characters right in a damn rpg, where the gameplay is centered around character interaction, and that means all of em. So they took their time, and done it right.
There is a very good reason why female player characters are not out yet in Star Citizen, and it's not because of lazy devs, it just takes a huge amount of work to get it right, and they do get it right! And I'm thankful for that!
The sounds are... I didn't notice anything bad, so they gotta be darn good, right? Some voice lines seemed to be out of sync, especially on the HUD transmissions, but this stuff will get fixed.
The story is... I can't even guess. It seems pretty in-depth and complicated, with all the stuff going on. It might just be cos we got dropped into the middle of it all, and it's actually really flat and boring.
It's just like watching a movie trailer, it could give the impression of a flat, boring story, or the impression of a really deep one, you won't know if it's the one you think it is, until you watch/play the whole thing.
You know, I could go on about how the livestream didn't perfectly live up to my overly high expectations, because I didn't get to see any new fancy mindblowing tech, after watching all the ATV's and playing the PTU. Also how we still don't have anything in our hands that proves that SQ42 is not just be a long and ambitious game, but a really good game...
But I don't care about these doubts and speculations anymore. Something made me leave most of my doubts behind, and fall into, as our Glorious Leader called it, the 95/5 category. This happened to me well before the SQ42 special stream.
The IGN SQ42 teaser, 2 days before the SQ42 stream, got me. Not the visuals (I hate how MH got deformed to look "stronger/cooler"), or the acting, or the fancy animations. Nope.
It was the Music!
If you played the original Wing Commander, you might have had a similar halucination experience as I did :D
If you don't know what I'm talking about, check out the first melody in this
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDq9qpWP43Q
then listen to the music in the teaser, right after Old Man roasts the tech guy.... The melody almost gets there, then gets cut short, and repeats throughout the teaser, until it transforms into sort of a theme for squadron. (you can hear it in the SQ gameplay as well, it seems to be the theme for takeoffs)
Maybe it's just my imagination, but I think this similarity was intentional, and it filled me with all the good, warm and fuzzy memories of all the Wing Commander games that I played. So yeah, even if it is a total coincidence, even if I'm hallucinating the similarities in the music, this made me happy, and feel right at home on the deck of that Idris. I got a 100% immersed at that moment.
It made me believe that SQ42 will be awesome!
I was in Awe for 1 hour and 6 mins. I have seen it 20 times with the whole family. I have watched the commentary 4 times. Everytime I see Mark Hamill perform, takes me back to the Wing Commander series and my time playing that amazing game. CIG has made a amazing thing here. Not only will we have an amazing game, but all the tech and tools they are using here will be used by future games from here on out. This is history in the making! I am, more than ever, fully committed to this journey!
I also have a man crush at Chris Roberts and Montoya! Lol
After coming home from work on Thursday night and being majorly disappointed, I have to be honest. I was enjoying the tour of the Houses of CIG with Mr. Roberts. When the video broke back to Chris and Sandi I put the thing on pause to go pour a pint of ale. I came back and hit play. I didn't touch my beer until it all ended. I lost count of how many times I said "Holy Fuck" to myself. That slice renewed my interest in the FPS. After seeing the Idris, I became a bit jealous of you Idris owners. I'll play the part of the mop swinger on anyone's ship. And I have definitely got to get an Avenger or a Gladius. Both looked sweet as pie. Better buckle up when it goes live, boys. It's going to be a fun ride.
After coming home from work on Thursday night and being majorly disappointed, I have to be honest. I was enjoying the tour of the Houses of CIG with Mr. Roberts. When the video broke back to Chris and Sandi I put the thing on pause to go pour a pint of ale. I came back and hit play. I didn't touch my beer until it all ended. I lost count of how many times I said "Holy Fuck" to myself. That slice renewed my interest in the FPS. After seeing the Idris, I became a bit jealous of you Idris owners. I'll play the part of the mop swinger on anyone's ship. And I have definitely got to get an Avenger or a Gladius. Both looked sweet as pie. Better buckle up when it goes live, boys. It's going to be a fun ride.
There is a very good reason why female player characters are not out yet in Star Citizen, and it's not because of lazy devs, it just takes a huge amount of work to get it right, and they do get it right! And I'm thankful for that!
I'm not griping that they are being lazy by not having them in game at all. I understand that they want to get them just right in realistic means as they have strived to achieve with most everything else. I'm simply eagerly looking forward to the lovely ladies being able to express themselves as the ladies they are should they so choose to do so as a means of making things more balanced, realistic & diverse. In fact, I feel that this is just as important to me to have in the game as any of the main features & more important than most of the extra features that they've been showing us that they plan on adding in. If this is sexist of me, then I accept that, but at least I mean well.
I am incredibly pleased but at the same time I'm not surprised because I had faith!
Haters can choke on their salt, I'm thrilled with the trust and happiness and excitement this is going to bring for the the community!
old and new.
A proper space game we were promised.. and two proper space games we shall receive!